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A fun prize puzzle from Araucaria – we found this pretty easy apart from the the bottom right corner, which took another look a few days later to finish it off. There’s a mini-theme based around 9 across (FORGE), but no other special features I could spot.

Double definition: “Last words of Omar” refers to the end of one of the poems in The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám – it’s this one, ending in the line “Where I made One—turn down an empty Glass!”; the other definition (“the pessimist has half one”) refers to the saying that to an optimist, the glass is half full, while to a pessimist, it’s half empty

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2012 at 12:02 am and is filed under Guardian.
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Thanks mhl. Araucaria’s seem to be getting easier, but lose none of their charm. The clueing is as ever good enough to throw up the answer even from obscurities like 18a, and point down interesting alleys like Omar’s last words.

Thanks, mhl. SE also last for me but only because I solved sequentially NW to SE which is a sign of how this really was pretty easy for a prize. A nice enough puzzle but really this should have swapped places with Bonxie on the Tuesday before which deserved the spot! [Perhaps the PISTOLS debacle would have been avoided too. ;)]

Thanks mhl. Like the others I thought it was pretty straightforward and only lingered a bit in the SE corner. At the risk of being pedantic, the shipping forecast area was FINISTERRE from the cape in Galicia. I only know this because I thought the spelling was unusual and had to look it up.

A great puzzle, but slightly on the easy side. I completed it but missed the Persian poetry and Wodehouse references. I have vague memories of Fry and Laurie on ITV on Sunday nights when I was a kid. I did wonder about LA being transatlantic. My first thought was NY. Does it just mean you can fly over the atlantic to or from LA? For example, London to LA? Have a nice weekend all

tupu, The god Mars also gives his name to one of the seven planets of early astronomy. By planet was meant a “heavenly body whose place among the fixed stars is not fixed” (Chambers). This includes the sun and moon. The other five are named after gods, whose names are used for five of the days in French. The Norse equivalents are used for the same five in English. Monday and lundi are linked to moon. These connections exist in many languages except that in French and most others Sunday becomes Dimanche, the day of the Lord. See Days of the Week in Wiki for full details.

Trench Adviser @9: LA is across the Atlantic from the UK, where the Guardian is published, so I think it’s fair to call it a “transatlantic city.” It makes for nice misdirection in 19d, as we naturally associate LA with the Pacific.

Thanks all
A disappointingly easy ‘prize’ puzzle.
I didn’t get the reference in 18ac or the definition in ‘Tuesday’ (last in).
I liked 22ac and19d, but a couple of good clues do not make a proper challenge.

Eileen
That’s not really solving online.
Poor old traditionalist that I am, I really enjoy reading the paper through from page 1 and then discovering the cherry right at the end as a reward. That is partly why I am so disappointed when the cherry turns out to be shrivelled and sour.
Also I do not own a printer(!).

Mary
To parse means to unravel the definition and cryptic parts of a clue. This then enables you to explain each word in the clue.
Surface means ignoring the parsing but asking does the whole clue read as a sensible (smooth to read?)sentence.
I hope that rather clumsy explanation helps.